An endangered species has been successfully cloned for the first time. A team
in Italy has cloned a mouflon, a wild sheep found in Sardinia, Corsica and
Cyprus, using the technique that cloned Dolly (Nature Biotechnology,
vol 19, p 962). They took DNA from dead mouflons and injected it into eggs from
domestic sheep. Several embryos were implanted into domestic ewes, one of which
gave birth to an apparently healthy mouflon lamb, which is living at a wildlife
centre in Sardinia. As a last resort, cloning might save many species that are
threatened with extinction.
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